Ulla Deventer “I’ve Never Been Big Sick”

Project Description:

Ulla Deventer I’ve Never Been Big Sick 2017 September 15 Ulla Deventer’s oeuvre finds itself at the intersection of documentary photography and portraiture. Moreover, it clearly features a phantasmagoric sensibility. Deventer translates deeply personal stories into dreamlike pictures grouped in series, carefully constructed with attention to symbolism and ambience, and leaves behind the […]

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Ulla Deventer

I’ve Never Been Big Sick

2017 September 15

Ulla Deventer’s oeuvre finds itself at the intersection of documentary photography and portraiture. Moreover, it clearly features a phantasmagoric sensibility. Deventer translates deeply personal stories into dreamlike pictures grouped in series, carefully constructed with attention to symbolism and ambience, and leaves behind the desired objectivity and ethnographic stance that so often weights upon this type of art photography.

For “I’ve never been Big Sick”, Deventer has been collaborating for over a year with five women who work as prostitutes in Belgium. The artist has spent a lot of time with these woman, in their workspaces as well as in their private homes where she regularly stayed overnight.

The material for this series is in fact gathered from two sources; the personal, living – as well as lived – environments of her protagonists that provide clues hinting to the images she wants to convey. Secondly, the artist incorporates several of the women’s verbal accounts and anecdotes into the series. The ensemble is of an explicitly confounding nature. By introducing fragility, sensitivity, innocence and melancholy alongside the little indications of the harsh reality these individuals experience in the setting, Deventer attempts to compose an alternative narrative about sex workers; the staging of tenderhearted still scenes are indeed to derail stereotypical views on prostitution. Often, the effect is unsettling and/or provocative, leaving the voyeuristic desire unnourished.

Tom Nys

Ulla Deventer

Born in 1984 in Henstedt-Ulzburg, Germany. Ulla is based in Hamburg as a freelance photographer and artist. In 2005 Ulla assisted the fashion photographer Iris Brosh in Paris. After studying Visual Communications in HFBK Hamburg she enroled in a Master in photography at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, which she finished in 2014.